Monthly Archives: July 2015

Violence and Compassion

Violence and compassion

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I know a woman and her husband who with a small push sent me spinning off on a huge adventure.

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I am most certainly not a Comparative Religions scholar, but it seems pretty much all the major religions have a number of themes in common. One of them being an idea that one should treat All Others with kindness and respect and as equals, which sounds like a wonderful idea but quickly gets sticky.
[Insert name of Respected Religious Figure]: Treat all humans with kindness and respect.
Us Regular Folk: Right on, Respected Religious Figure! Love our fellow humans. Except for that group of Others over there.
[Insert name of Respected Religious Figure]: Treat all humans with kindness and respect.
Us: Oh….right, of course. All humans…..but surely not that other group of Others, right? I mean look at what they believe in!
[Insert name of Respected Religious Figure]: All humans.
Us: All humans? Huh…..got it “all humans”……..by which you cannot mean that horrible person who has done the thing that is so horrible.
[Insert name of Respected Religious Figure]: (Looks at us knowingly)
Us: Oh, come on, Respected Religious Figure!!!
This is probably one of the reasons these folks are Respected Religious Figure and we are just Us.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only lloght can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.

During the last few months the crazy whirling stream that I swim in has taken a strange course in that I have been exposed to more violence in this time then I am normally exposed to across 2-3 years. I have not been the target of any of this violence but I have had a seat close enough to the front that offered a frightening and challenging view of the action. While keenly aware of the human suffering, I have witnessed a number of opportunities within myself (because it is all about me) to face my own demons around violence. Among the many opportunities have been questions about my attempts to bring less judgement and more compassion to the people in my life and the people I stumble upon as I try to be more present. I want to share what’s been bouncing around inside my head from two of these violent events.

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Recently I was again involved in trying to help someone I care for deeply navigate growing emotional, verbal and physical abuse by her son. While doing so I was aware of the powerful pull to judge all involved and push for what I “knew” was the “answer.” I wanted to scream, “Kick that immature shit out of your house, end this pattern, force him to be responsible for his behavior, protect yourself and the rest of your children!” But I didn’t. It was so easy to judge him, to judge her, and I knew that would be an epic fail. Those were the things I needed to say to quiet my own fears about the impact her chaos might have on my life. Those were not things that would have in anyway helped her or her family. She knows kicking him out is the option everyone wants her to do, including me. Hearing it does nothing to bring compassion to her suffering, does nothing to listen to her fear.

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As I sat with this, deleting yet another text message I was preparing to send her because it was about me, not about hearing her, I tried to listen for what she was afraid of. I heard that she was afraid her son would die; alcohol/drugs, gang violence, encounters with the police gone wrong, or that he would hurt or kill someone else. Perhaps if she could keep him at home, no matter how abusive he became, he would be safe. She was struggling to be a good mother in the out-of-control chaos of white water rapids that is her world. Why should she be judged for that, other than it is easy for me to do so?

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And him? Immature, fucking shit who deserves to have his ass kicked and kicked to the curb, how do I feel about him? I know this young man. I know that life has kicked him in the kidneys, and then stomped on him when he fell to the ground. He is filled with rage, and helplessness, and fear from his history. He is lashing out at the wrong targets because there are no right targets. When I set aside my seeing him as a problem that I wish would go away, I saw his suffering and, instead of disgust and anger, I felt compassion and I understood. I wished I could reject him out of hand with self-righteous anger, but I found I couldn’t. I wanted to just feel pissed off at him and his immaturity, but I didn’t have it anymore. All I had was compassion, which in all honesty kind of pissed me off because anger felt more satisfying, even if compassion felt more real. Now to be clear, I still think she should throw him out, and I feel deep compassion for the suffering of both. I blame this as a side effect of daily random acts of kindness. So if you try anything like that, be forewarned.

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What about the second incident? On the Fourth of July, I went to a baseball game with some friends, had a couple hot dogs and beer (what could be more American?), my fiends and I walked from the stadium to the National Mall to catch some of the Folk Life Festival (I think the country highlighted this year was Peru), saw the pre-fireworks preparation in front of the Capital Building, and then went our separate ways. The Metro subway train to take me home was delayed (not a big surprise) and when the train did come, the going was slow. Final the train operator apologized for the delay, saying there was “police activity” at one of the stops ahead of us, so the trains were single tracking. We finally pulled into the station in question, the train on the other line was stopped, there were paramedics, lots of police, miles of police tape marking off a single car and all the space around it, something “Very Bad” had happened, and had happened not long before we arrived. By the time I made it home it was reported that a shockingly brutal murder had occurred on that train car, a petty theft that turned into the assailant stabbing the victim more than 40 times and then severely beating the victim, in broad daylight, on one of the safest metro lines, in a car with numerous others in it on their way to Fourth of July festivities. Absolutely horrifying.

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The next day they arrested the assailant. This won’t be a subtle or nuanced murder trial with twists and turns in which CSI solves the case. There is video surveillance footage, DNA evidence, oh, and let’s not forget about those 20 or so severely traumatized eyewitnesses. I hope he goes to jail forever, in part because of the nature of the crime, and, in all honesty, because his actions toppled my views of how the world is supposed to be, seeing the crime scene forced me to acknowledge a world I do not want to acknowledge, the whole event scares the shit out of me. How do we bring compassion to something so horrendous and brutal, something so nightmarish?

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I don’t know. I have been trying to step back from my fear and disgust, and somehow get some perspective. The mug shot that ran in the papers and news showed the standard defiant, angry Non-Human Monster we always see. And we know this is not who will show up for the trial. That young man will have a different look and be dressed in a suit. Evidence will emerge about his childhood, his neighborhood, the genuine struggles with poverty and violence. Maybe he will have a history of mental illness that fell through the gaps in a poorly sewn safety net. There will be reasons. Of course, just like I am not a scholar in Comparative Religion, I am also not a scholar in Sociology & Media. However, I offer this; it seems fundamentally human that we quickly want to capture and castigate the Villain so we know our world is safe in no uncertain terms (See the Captured Monster that is so not One of Us). Later when we find out the Captured Monster is One of Us, we need to find out why this horrible violent crime happened, we need an explanation, an explanation that also allows us to feel our world is safe (See the Human who was Understandably Deeply Damaged). I think that understanding helps us to sleep at night without the fear that a member of our pack might turn rabid in the night and do horrible things.

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I don’t know. Maybe somewhere in this likely turn of events there is the smallest space to begin to find compassion for this young man. Maybe not. I still want him to be locked up forever because of this brutal crime, and I hope that there will be people in his life over the next 40-50 years who can be compassionate for his suffering. I hope that my sense of a need for justice can also be tempered with my desire to find a way to bring compassion to all. I think finding that is important for the path I am wobbling along, important for my soul. Perhaps there is a Respected Religious Figure or two who also thinks this is a good idea. Maybe.

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A Tale of Two RAKs

I know a woman and her husband who have inspired me to find courage to walk toward when the expected behavior is to ignore.

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Me: Hey. I have been a bit behind in posting lately. You: If by “a bit behind” you mean 40 days.      Me: (Hanging head in shame) On the plus side I have continued my commitment to daily Random Acts of Kindness.  I just haven’t written….although I have a really good excuse in that my crazy world has been spinning on a more than usual wobbly axis.  I am writing today though!                          You: We quiver with excitement.    Me: Sarcasm does not become you.

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Today I engaged in one of the most intense RAKs I have done thus far.  I was downtown with some visiting relatives on our way to a lovely brunch.  We were way too early so had to walk around for a while before the restaurant even opened.  As we walked, I was saw a couple who were obviously having an argument; she wasn’t saying anything but kept trying to walk away, he was speaking quietly but intensely and gripping her arm tightly, stopping her from walking away.  It was one of those uncomfortable situations where you don’t know if you should say something, it wasn’t clear she was in trouble…still…. Maybe it is none of my business…is it rude to say something…..what if he gets violent toward me…what is going on, I can’t tell….still?  I set my uncertainty aside and I took the easy way out and just kept walking. We had teenagers with us, don’t need to be causing a scene and trouble with teens with us.  Just keep moving.

Deep Fish #2

When we circled back to return to the restaurant, now a couple blocks up and on the other side of the street, we encountered them again.  Things had turned ugly.  There was a group of people standing about ½ a block away from the couple.  Someone said, “Oh my god, they are fighting.” I walked to the front of the group to see him push her down into a bush and stand over her yelling and cursing at her.  I walked toward them until I was about 10-15 feet away where he could see me (he did, we made eye contact, he pulled her out of the bush and, although still arguing, things dropped a notch), I took out my phone and called 911.  I told the operator where I was and what I was seeing.  She had me describe what the couple looked like and what they were wearing (as he was wearing baggy jeans, I was able to share that he was wearing grey underwear- we both had a laugh about that).

Deep Sea Fish #3

The police arrived, I waited a little closer until the officer was free, I told the officer that I had called 911 and he took my statement.   A nice hippie girl walked by and said thank you for making the call.  One of the adults in my group said that was an impressive demonstration to the teens of doing the right thing when others were frozen.  I told her that the truth is I was so scared my voice was all quaking on the phone and I could feel one of my legs shaking. We both had a good laugh about that.  She kindly offered that walking toward my anxiety when I didn’t want to meant that I got bonus points for this, and, as I am all about bonus points, I accepted them.

Deep Sea Fish #1

What I really wanted to share today is something I have noticed about two types of Random Acts of Kindness, both of which are “valuable” (assuming RAKs have value other than my earning bonus points).  My brilliant categorization scheme divides them two categories: Doing and Being.  Now, yes, according to the rules of my Year of RAK, all require some level of presence, so the distinction is whether the core activity is Doing or Being. Each makes different demands on us and, at least for me, Doing is much easier than Being. I present to you “A Tale of Two RAKs” (Please insert your own dramatic reading of what follows):

Yin Yang

As we discussed many months ago, even though airports are about opening up our world, transporting us across distances undreamt of a couple generations ago through what has become a mundane process, airports ironically also pull for a special type of self-focused, anxiety-induced, small-world view that can become so narrow that our ability to see Other Humans is severely impaired. It becomes You in a sea of scurrying blobs of flesh, a sizable proportion of which appear to have been assigned by the Queen of the Hive the task of getting in your way.  It is perhaps also ironic that in this same context of self-focused, anxiety-induced, small-world view, so many of these scurrying blobs of flesh are finding it difficult to navigate the mundane process of being transported across undreamt distances. Simply put, if you can find a way to rise above the plight of the Hive People, it is pretty easy to do Random Acts of Kindness in an airport.

On a recent trip, I accomplished several RAKs before I even made it to my gate.  Yes, one must be present to certain extent for any RAK, but fundamentally all my airport RAKs involved Doing, not Being. My exemplar airport RAK was an interaction with an older woman who was behind me in the airport security line. She was not old enough to get the “leave your stuff on” TSA Get-Out-Jail-Pass, but was old enough to find the security procedure a bit intimidating and a tad confusing.  I let her go in front of me, put her stuff in bins, asked the questions TSA would ask to avoid complications as she went through the magic scanning machines & generally shepherded her through. I figured a bit less anxiety & confusion made everyone’s day better.

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On the other end of the RAK spectrum is a recent interaction with an elderly Hispanic gentleman.  He approached me as I was getting out of my car, on my way into a building for an “important” work meeting. He was disheveled. His English wasn’t good, my Spanish wasn’t good. In our efforts to communicate, it quickly became apparent he was not drunk or stoned or schizophrenic or any of the other common flavors of mental illness you typically find on the streets. He was not acting or pretending. I came to believe he had dementia. The disease was in its early stages, but I felt the familiar interaction behavior pattern, the loosening of logic. I have seen this for several years in my world.

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I don’t know that I ever truly understood what he was asking for, but, through his broken English and my broken Spanish, I was able to piece together some of the important parts of his story. As his story unfolded, his eyes welled with tears, which began to stream down his face, and eventually he was sobbing, waves of grief flowing over us. I tried to be as fully present for his pain as I could, and there was also a huge part of my brain that just wanted to know what the fuck he wanted and how I could make him (and his overwhelming fear and distress) go away.  I don’t think he wanted money (What homeless person doesn’t want money?!!) because I gave him some money, he looked at it confused and kept talking & crying.  I listened and I listened, trying to hear just what the “ask” was, just tell me what you need!

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I listened and I listened, and then, instead of listening for how to make him go away, I just listened and tried be with him, tried to understand his suffering, tried to hear him. Nothing miraculous happened. I didn’t fix him. I didn’t save him. And I didn’t run away (even though I wanted to: “Look! It’s the Pope!!” (Me run off)). And still something got better. He quieted, we prayed together (I’m not a big prayer guy but it was obvious he was), he sang me a hymn in Spanish, I explained and pointed out how to get to a nearby church that had social services that might be able to help his pervasive problems. We went our ways; him seemingly more stable, maybe with more hope, perhaps more of a sense that another human had seen him as a Human and shared his pain; me sad, shaken, raw from the interaction, and a sense that I had seen and heard another Human and shared his pain.

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If you should ever find yourself with a close-family-member-with-Alzheimer’s disease and you are wondering how to rip into your already inflamed heart, encountering an elderly homeless person with dementia will do the trick. Of course, if you should ever find yourself with a close-family-member-with-Alzheimer’s disease (or any of a zillion difficult life challenges), you may also find yourself in a place where you are better able to Be in whatever nasty, heartbreaking situation you are ambushed by, and it will suck. And you may find that you walk away with something important…..or not.

As always your experience and challenges with random kindness may be completely different from mine, revealing different lessons about who you are, what you fear, how you want to be different in your stream.  For me, having the concreate accomplishment is easier.  Probably because Doing allows me to push away my insecurities and keep at bay the monsters of Unlovable and Never Good Enough that lay in-wait in the deep, dark, cold waters,  ready to rise up without warning.  Ha ha, silly monsters!!  Look, I just did something demonstrating my value and, of course, showing all just how worthy, perhaps even lovable, I must be with concreate evidence that can be pointed to as an example of my worth and worthiness.  Being is more slippery, harder to bring forth as evidence in self-worth court, especially when monsters are doing the cross examination.  And yet, it is growing ever more apparent to me that Being, although harder and often sucky, is where the value lies; value for interactions with Other Humans, value for interactions with the ones you care deeply for.  Now, if I could only figure out a way to assign bonus points to Being.  That would be epic.